Make-Believe Miniatures: 15 Amazing Tilt-Shift City Photos

It’s a case of life imitating art: photographs of full-sized objects or scenes that look like tiny, perfectly constructed models. Tilt-shift photography, whether using a real tilt-shift lens or Photoshop, creates a “fake miniaturization” effect that tricks the eye with shallow depth of field and high camera angles. Take a look at these 15 images and you’ll find yourself wondering how the artist convincingly reproduced such tiny objects before realizing that they’re larger than they appear.

Smallest Shovel Ever?

Looking at this photo by Juan Pablo Mejia, it’s hard to believe it’s not a real miniature. Down to their little hard hats and tools, this construction scene seems like a bunch of meticulously sculpted and painted figurines with power lines as thin as thread.

Norway’s Nidaros Cathedral

The trees on this image of Norway’s Nidaros Cathedral look as if they were crafted from lichen, but artist Ola Endra Reitstoen created it by first making an ‘alpha channel’ to represent the distance to the objects in the photo, starting with a gradient from white to black “and then tweaking the gradient to better represent the distance to the buildings in a better way,” she explains “Then apply the Lens Blur filter to the original, and use the ‘alpha channel’ as a depth map.” Reitstoen provided the depth map to demonstrate her technique.

Painting the Town

The saying ‘painting the town red’ gets a new meaning in this image by Matt West, in which the photographer has used both forced perspective and selective blurring to make it look as though he is touching up a tower in the town of Loughborough, UK.

Niagara Falls Dock

Looking at this image of passengers boarding a Niagara Falls tour boat, it’s easy to find yourself marveling over the incredibly realistic sea, or wondering what they used to create such tiny figurines of people, before remembering that it’s not actually a miniature.